That the work was not exhaustive may be conceded, for after its completion in ten volumes we measured the mass of material which had been collected and examined, and found that we could have printed forty-six additional volumes. And while our selections may not have accorded with the views of every one, we have been gratified by the hearty reception that work has received. In the like spirit, and with like purpose, we present this collection of "The World's Best Essays." Giving prominence and preference to those who have written in our own language (for this work is designed primarily for the benefit of the American reader), we have searched the literature of all nations and languages for their best essays, have had careful and accurate translations made, and, placing them beside the writings of our own essayists, have thus sought to justify the title given to this work. We have not attempted to enforce any particular views in respect to religion, science, political economy, or other department of life, but in the most catholic spirit have aimed to give some represen. tation of the writings of every one who has succeeded in placing his name on the long roll of the world's true essayists. And trusting that the reader will find in these pages ample com pensation for his patience in perusing, we commit our collection to the kindly judgment of the American public. David J. Brewer. JOHN ABERCROMBIE (1780-1844) BERCROMBIE'S definition of the object of science was dictated by a deep consciousness of the supernatural origin of nature, and it has served to discredit him with some later writers who hold that the supernatural is "unknowable." His essays on the "Intellectual Powers," on the "Philosophy of the Moral Feelings," and allied topics have not been discredited with the general public, however, by the change of scientific terminology, and it is by no means certain that any later writer-not even Mr. Spencer himself-has succeeded in putting into intelligible and accurate English so many well-defined ideas of fundamental importance as guided Abercrombie in the composition of such essays as that on the "General Nature and Objects of Science" with which he introduced his essays on the Intellectual Powers." He differs from some later writers on similar topics because of his recognition of law in nature as a tendency resulting from an infinite power of improvement imposed on nature rather than as a necessary and inherent quality of matter itself. To him nature presented a harmony of forces working to produce results tending to a more nearly perfect harmony. It is said that in his religious life he was "unaffectedly pious," but this involved him in no contradiction when, writing before Professor Huxley, he stated the scientific principle of Huxley's "agnosticism." That final causes are beyond the reach of chemical analysis and that they are never to be reached by microscopic investigation, he insists in his analysis of the powers of the intellect. But he recognized this as a mere matter of definition,— an implication of the word "knowledge" itself as it implies the results of experience and as it is distinct in meaning from "consciousness." Professor Max Müller in his "Science of Thought" expresses the same idea by quoting: "We have but faith; we cannot know, Intellect to Abercrombie is a mere mode of operation,- a method by which the human soul takes hold on the transitory phenomena of a natural order in which a Supreme Will is eternally operating to produce infinite improvement. It is said by his critics that he does not show "marked originality" in such ideas and it is in the nature of things impossible that he should. They are as old as the Chaldean science which expresses itself through the metaphors of the Book of Job. They belong to all poets and creative thinkers from Homer to Goethe. Aristotle appropriated them as the foundation principles of his school, and they are no less the foundations of the "Novum Organum" when, with the premise that "the beginning is from God," Bacon declares that "the induction which is to be available for the discovery of science and arts must analyze nature by proper rejections and exclusions . . not only to discover axioms, but also in the formation of notions; and it is in this induction that our chief hope lies." This observation of all possible operations of nature as part of a Supreme Law not governed by the qualities of matter, but operating harmoniously through them, Bacon proposed as the reasonable mode through which alone the scientific intelligence can act. Certainly there is nothing of novelty in Abercrombie, writing after him. If novelty or originality be possible in thought, it is by no means established that it is desirable, and the question which is finally to deter mine the merits of any thinker is not "Is he original?" but "Is he right? Tried by that test Abercrombie is perhaps as little apt to be discredited as any later writer on the subjects which occupied his attention. He was born in 1780 at Aberdeen, Scotland, and educated in medicine at its university and in London. For a long time he held the first rank among the physicians and scientific writers of Scotland. His "Inquiries Concerning the Intellectual Powers of Man" was published in 1830 and three years later he followed it with "The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings." In 1835 he became Lord Rector of Marischal College at Aberdeen, and, until his death in 1844, Scotland honored him as one of its greatest thinkers. His essays have passed through many editions, and still retain a popularity due to their ease of style and the lucidity of the language in which they express ideas which some writers on similar topics succeed in making incompre hensible. W. V. B. THE GENERAL NATURE AND OBJECTS OF SCIENCE Y THE will of the Almighty Creator, all things in nature have B* been placed in certain relations to each other, which are fixed and uniform. In other words, they have been endowed with capacities of acting and capabilities of being acted upon, according to certain uniform laws; so that their actions take place in the same manner in every instance in which the same bodies are brought together under similar circumstances. We have a conviction, which appears to be original and instinctive, of the general uniformity of these relations; and in this consists our confidence in the regularity of all the operations of nature. But the powers or principles on which the relations depend are entirely hidden from us in our present state of being. The province of human knowledge is merely to observe the facts and to trace what their relations or sequences are. This is to be accomplished only by a careful and extensive observation of the facts as they pass before us, and by carefully distinguishing their true or uniform relations from connections which are only incidental and temporary. In our first observation of any particular series of facts or events, we find a certain number of them placed together in a state of contiguity or apparent connection. But we are not entitled from this to assume the connection to be anything more than incidental juxtaposition. When, in the further progress of observation, we find the same events occurring a certain number of times, in the same relations or sequences to each other, we suspect that their connection is not merely that of incidental contiguity. We begin to believe that there exists among them such a relation as leads us, when we meet with some of these events, to expect that certain others are to follow. Hence is excited our idea of power in reference to these events, or of the relation of cause and effect. This relation, however, according to the utmost extent of our knowledge of it in any individual instance, is founded entirely upon the fact of certain events uniformly following one another. But when we have found, by sufficient observation, the particular events which do thus follow one another, we conclude that there is a connection, whatever may be the nature of it, in consequence of which the sequence which we have observed will continue to recur in the same fixed and uniform manner. In |